Gerald Potterton obit

Gerald Potterton, ‘Heavy Metal’ Director, Dies at 91

The British-Canadian filmmaker is also best known for his animation work on 'Yellow Submarine.'

 

 He was not on the list.

Gerald Potterton, the British-Canadian filmmaker who directed the adult animated cult classic Heavy Metal in 1981 for Columbia Pictures, has died. He was 91.

Potterton passed away at the Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins Hospital in Cowansville, Quebec on Aug. 23, the National Film Board of Canada said on Wednesday.

“Gerald came to Canada and the NFB to be part of a new wave of storytelling, one that was fresh and irreverent, and he brought great wit and creativity to every project. He was also a builder, helping to lay the foundation for today’s independent Canadian animation industry with Potterton Productions… He was an exceptional artist and a truly nice man,” Claude Joli-Coeur, NFB chairperson and government film commissioner, said in a statement.

Born on March 8, 1931 in London, England, Potterton graduated from the Hammersmith Art School and emigrated to Canada in 1954 to work alongside the pioneers of NFB animation.

He created animation for NFB films in the 1950s before directing his own classic shorts, including the Stephen Leacock adaptation My Financial Career in 1962 and Christmas Cracker in 1963, which he helmed along with Norman McLaren, Jeff Hale and Grant Munro. Both films were nominated for Academy Awards.

Potterton also directed the live-action comedy The Ride in 1963 and The Railrodder in 1965, which starred Buster Keaton in one of his last film roles. In 1968, he returned to England to work on a sequence for the animated Beatles feature Yellow Submarine.

Back in Canada, he turned to forming his own indie studio, Potterton Productions, for film and TV projects, which  included  his Oscar Wilde adaptation The Selfish Giant (1972), an animated short that earned him his third Oscar nomination.

In another new direction, Potterton directed the animated feature Heavy Metal, which became a cult classic. He also collaborated with the NFB again on his second Leacock adaptation, The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones in 1983,  and co-created the animated children’s series Smoggies, which run for four years to 1990.

In 2020, he wrote and illustrated a popular children’s book about Joseph-Armand Bombardier, L’homme des neiges. A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Potterton was selected by the World Animation Celebration in 1998 as one of “Ten Men Who Have Rocked the Animation World.”

Potterton illustrated the 1977 children's book, Scouse the Mouse, by Donald Pleasence.[7] He also wrote The Star (and George), published by Harper & Row, 1968.

Filmography

Production          Year       Details

Huff and Puff     1955      co-writer, co-animator with Grant Munro

Fish Spoilage Control      1956      animator

It's a Crime          1957      animator

Hors d'oeuvre    1960      co-director, co-animator with Arthur Lipsett, Derek Lamb, Kaj Pindal et al.

Life and Radiation            1960      co-animator with Kenneth Horn, Pierre L'Amare

My Financial Career        1962      director, co-animator with Grant Munro

Christmas Cracker            1963      co-director with Norman McLaren, Grant Munro, Jeff Hale

The Ride               1963      director; actor

Buster Keaton Rides Again            1965      appears as himself

The Railrodder, a. k. a. The Railroader     1965      director; writer; co-editor with Jo Kirkpatrick

Cool McCool       1966      director

The Quiet Racket              1966      director

Yellow Submarine            1968      animator

Pinter's People 1969      director

Tiki Tiki 1971      co-director with Rolan Bykov, Jack Stokes; writer; producer

The Selfish Giant               1971      producer

The Rainbow Boys, a. k. a. The Rainbow Gang      1973      director; writer

The Happy Prince             1974      producer

The Little Mermaid          1974      executive producer

The Remarkable Rocket                 1975      producer; director; writer

The Christmas Messenger            1975      producer

Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure          1977      animator; associate and sequence director

Canada Vignettes: Winter – Dressing Up                1979      director; writer

Canada Vignettes: Winter – Starting the Car         1979      director; writer

Heavy Metal       1981      director

The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones     1983      director; animator

Rubik the Amazing Cube               1983      story director

George and the Christmas Star   1985      director; writer; producer

Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow        1987      appears as himself

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz       1987      animation director; title design

The Marvelous Land of Oz            1987      animation director; title design

Ozma of Oz         1987      animation director; title design

The Emerald City of Oz   1987      animation director; title design

The Smoggies    1988      director; writer; creator

The Real Story of I'm a Little Teapot         1990      director

The Real Story of Baa Baa Black Sheep    1991      director; art director

Young Robin Hood           1991      director; writer

The Real Story of Happy Birthday to You                1992      director; writer; lyricist (The Girlie Wants a Song / The Birthday Contest Medley)